Swiss International Hotel Xiamen — Hotel in Xiamen

Located on Xiamen harbour front, the Swiss Grand Hotel offers a front row seat of Gulangyu Island and panoramic views across the bay. This is the real selling point. It's not the newest of hotels, more Grandad than Grandeur, but has lots of charm and grace. The rooms are good, a little tired in places and as others have stated, the placing of products in the room that are 'chargeable extras' is a bit old school. The breakfast buffet was superb. A lot of choice and variety and the serving times allowed for early starts or if you fancied a layin. We stayed for 5 nights and still enjoyed every visit. Staying with young Children, there is a kids soft play area, though this is a chargeable extra. A lot of hotels are offering this facility, but why they charge hotel guests to use is not great. The play area in general was OK and offers a variety of activities, but the scalextric track did not work (and costs extra to use), some of the ball pool vacuum pipes didn't work, and why oh why did someone think hard wood pellets is a great material to put in a soft play. It kills your feet walking on it, and the small hard pieces are a serious risk to very young kids. Location wise, this hotel wins over many better, newer hotels. A few tips/heads up:The ferry for tourists is not adjacent to the hotel as you may be led to believe. Its a 15 min taxi ride up stream to the 'international cruise terminal'. Buying tickets of you don't have a Chinese ID card is a pain and the overall hassel of it all makes you question is it worth it. Buy or borrow a good pair of binoculars and sit in your room. Xiamen Railway Station is not as near as you think. Give yourself at least an hour if catching a train. We missed ours due to heavy traffic. Taxis are plenty, though its convenient if you can book the Uber style cars. With our amount of luggage and my foreign face many local taxis didn't want to take us. With 3 young kids I can kind of understand.The red Sightseeing bus is not particularly great for seeing sights. Far better to walk about or use the metro. A lot of the main urban attractions are within walking distance.Overall, a nice stay with a superb location. I would recommend and would consider staying again. Xiamen is a...

Swiss Grand Hotel in Xiamen was a pleasant surprise. Everything was polished and flawless. The service is good, if they could speak more than basic English it would be better. And charging 7 USD for a swimming cap is not nice. The rooms were spacious and could be adjusted to your needs if necessary. My one daughter with two sons was upgraded to a suite with a cartoon theme and an Indian wigwam tent. The other daughter with a 10-month-old baby received a room with a small pantry and microwave, perfect for warming up baby food. The hotel's restaurants are affordable and busy, ensuring fresh ingredients. Everything was wel taken care of. The presentation is also beautiful.We always choose 5-star hotels and the price-quality ratio of Swiss Grand is simply stunning. We are on a tour and came from a globally recognised 5-star hotel M in Shanghai, but it falls short in every aspect mentioned earlier.Xiamen is a pleasant city, but don't be fooled by the local seafood restaurants in the nightmarket area. We fell into a tourist traps. Outside it looks clean and big, they even have an elevator for disabled people, but in fact it was dirty and they charge incredible prices, simply three times what you would pay at your hotel. And it was the most bland uninspired seafood I have ever had. Maybe the chef quit, because I could cook much better by just poaching and boiling..They are just fraudsters and are taking advantage of silly tourists. We paid more than 500 USD for a meal for 6 adults and three kids (＞ 1yo, 5yo, 11yo). Beware of these ruthless entrepreneurs. They bring...

Very disappointing visit. Booked an executive room but at no stage did the hotel deem it important to inform me the executive lounge was closed. The afternoon tea and food/drink replacement service in the lobby was appalling. 4 chicken nuggets that took 30 minutes and a glass of undrinkable red!! The manager felt bad and allowed us to order from the room service menu. Catch - we had to return to our room to eat it. Was told I couldn't bring my wine - blessing in. disguise I guess. But overall I felt cheated. ||Concierge service was terrible (and quite frankly the service in general - this may have been a language thing but yikes), Asked how I go about getting to the island and was handed a map. At the Pan Pacific 2 days later the concierge was amazing. ||Their gym is also used as a paid gym by the public. I've never had an issue with machine access in a hotel ever, regardless how small the gym was. Not the case here. ||Final point (and maybe a petty one beyond the hotel's control). On arriving back on my first evening around 6pm - 3-4 coaches had pulled in (maybe a conference). Without exageration it took over 10 minutes to get a lift (and I know how to elbow with the best of them), ||Prior to arrival, I was going to extend an extra 2 nights but decided to move to the Pan Pac. The room was smaller, the view not as good but the experience was 10 times better for...